Cybercrime

Mule accounts decoded: The hidden banking layer behind cybercrime

Mule accounts have become a significant challenge for India's cybercrime enforcement agencies, as through these accounts the fraudsters move illicit funds through banks before detection

What is the 'Boss scam'? How fake CEOs are stealing money from employees | Cybercrime

A WhatsApp message from your CEO asking for an urgent transfer might seem routine. But India's cybercrime agency warns that it could be part of a growing "Boss Scam" targeting businesses across the co

Corporate honchos on the radar of cyber criminals; I4C warns of 'Boss Scam'

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has warned of a sophisticated fraud campaign, "Boss Scam", targeting corporate leaders by compromising the devices of senior executives and their messaging accounts, before directing employees to make fraudulent financial transfers. In a carefully calibrated deception, scammers contact chief executives or other high-ranking officials via email and WhatsApp, posing as regulators from the Reserve Bank of India, threatening the victim with violations, urgent deficiencies and directing immediate action, creating a climate of manufactured pressure. The hackers unload their malware onto the devices used by the senior corporate leaders in the form of a compressed ZIP archive containing an executable program accompanied by a Dynamic Link Library file. "When the executive extracts and executes the file on a Windows desktop or laptop, a Trojan dropper is initiated. The malware establishes a persistent foothold, compromises the system, and hijac

Ex-PM IK Gujral's son duped of ₹7.8 cr in online scam; ₹4 cr frozen

Former Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Gujral was allegedly duped of Rs 7.8 crore after scammers impersonated him on an online messaging application and tricked his company's financial staff into transferring funds, police said on Thursday. Naresh Gujral, 78, is the son of the late Inder Kumar Gujral, who served as India's 12th prime minister from 1997 to 1998. An e-FIR in connection with the fraud was filed with the Delhi Police on Tuesday, prompting an investigation. According to police, the fraud occurred between June 12 and June 16. During this period, the scammers created an account on an online messaging platform using Naresh Gujral's display picture to impersonate him. They sent messages instructing one of his employees to transfer funds via Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) to a specified bank account for what appeared to be urgent business-related purposes. Believing the instructions were legitimate, the employee, who had been given financial access by Gujral, executed four separat

Sri Lanka emerging as new base for Asia's billion-dollar scam networks

Sri Lanka has stepped up its crackdown on cyber-scam networks, arresting over 1,000 people this year, but fast-moving operators are exploiting legal gaps and easily accessible tourist visas

'Bharat Bluff' shows how trust became one of the weakest links online

Bharat Bluff is filled with first-person accounts of scams that allow readers to comprehend the gravity of India's scam economy beyond data

AI makes cybercrime threat more intense for businesses worldwide: Report

AI accelerates cyber threats as enterprises ramp up spending on digital security

Canvas outage during cyberattack disrupts finals at schools, universities

A system that thousands of schools and universities use was offline on Thursday during a cyberattack, creating chaos as students tried to study for finals and underscoring education's dependence on technology. The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the system was taken down as a precaution or because the hackers knocked it offline. Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said. Students quickly took to social media to ask if others were unable to access Canvas, with many panicking that they could no longer view course materials housed within the platform

OpenAI releases new policy blueprint to prevent digital child abuse

Framework targets AI-generated abuse content, strengthens reporting systems and embeds safety-by-design measures to detect and prevent misuse, initially focusing on child protection in the US

Fraud safety net: RBI's new framework will boost trust in digital payments

The framework comes at a time when India's digital-payment ecosystem is rapidly expanding

Maharashtra, UP among 10 high risk states leading in mule account cases

Other regions identified as major hotspots include Haryana, Delhi, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu

StatsGuru: Scroll steals childhood as screen-time concerns intensify

As India debates age limits on social media amid rising child screen time and cybercrime, global precedents and domestic data are pushing policymakers toward tighter regulation

Datanomics: OTP scams topped cyber fraud as Telangana became a hotspot

The new norms are slated to kick in from April 1

Generative AI lowering costs, making cybercrime more efficient: GCA CEO

The GCA chief noted a disturbing trend in the volume and sophistication of digital crimes, which serves as a critical backdrop to the summit's focus on responsible AI

Cambodia crackdown exposes 'digital arrest' scam centre targeting Indians

Cambodian authorities have uncovered a scam centre featuring a fake Indian police station set-up, allegedly used by fraudsters to carry out "digital arrest" scams targeting victims in India

Pan-India cyber investment scam busted, 12 held from 6 states: UP police

A pan-India cyber investment fraud allegedly involving overseas links was busted with the arrest of 12 people from six states, police said on Saturday. The accused were arrested over the past 24 hours from Odisha, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for allegedly running a nationwide cyber investment racket through WhatsApp groups, SP (Rural) Amrit Jain said. Working in coordination with the Ministry of Telecommunications, the Aligarh cyber crime cell identified around 600 WhatsApp groups that were allegedly being used to lure and cheat investors across the country, Jain said. Police claimed that timely action helped prevent an estimated fraud of about Rs 500 crore that could have affected more than 1.5 lakh people nationwide. The case came to light after Dinesh Sharma, a retired deputy general manager of Punjab National Bank, approached the cyber crime cell on January 31 and reported that he had been cheated of over Rs 11 lakh through a WhatsApp-based .

Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit searches X office, Musk summoned

The raid is linked to a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction by X or its executives

Cyber alert: Scammers hijack call forwarding to steal OTPs, bank alerts

An alarming trend is being registered increasingly as the cybercriminals are exploiting the call forwarding feature on mobile phones to secretly reroute incoming calls

Supreme Court entrusts CBI with pan-Indian probe into digital arrest cases

Supreme Court has asked the CBI to prioritise its investigation into digital arrest scams, directing all states and government agencies to cooperate and empowering the agency to examine bankers

CII seeks national M&E policy to position India as global creative hub

CII has called for a National Media and Entertainment Policy to unify regulations and unlock growth, arguing that India can build a globally competitive creative economy by 2030